The Lies That Bind
by Guardian1
Summary: Fifty onesentence challenges. Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows: Nami x Usopp.


**A/N:** Done for the 1sentence community on livejournal; if you squint, turn your head sideways and put cucumber on your eyes, you may, in fact, be able to see a hint of Merryshipping. That may also distract you from the fact that Nami is _so on top_ here that she should be embarrassed. Hopefully it will also distract you from my punctuation abuse.

* * *

**#01 - Ring**

"Here," she says, "here here here," and jams rings on Usopp's fingers while laughing hysterically with him in their puddle of wadded-up beli and diamonds; shoulders grazed from making coin angels, sifting diamonds and rubies into his lap as Chopper gapes at Nami **sharing**.

**#02 - Hero**

"So then I, great Captain Usopp - not just the feared leader of eight million men, but renowned inventor genius - took her trembling hands in my own, and soothed her with my manly... soothing: 'No woman should have to fight violently (and actually now that I think about it you hit me all the time and maybe you will stop after this), but for you I shall put god-like power in your hands,' and with that I built the Clima T - _Nami stop laughing._'"

**#03 - Memory**

"I always remember her birthday," he says, and drops the paper crane overboard - until she does it too, fingers smoothing down the foolscap, until both of them are throwing hard and crying hard for Bankiina: for Bellemere: for the women who unwillingly orphaned them: crying even for that deadbeat Yasopp and the father she never met.

**#04 - Box**

She spills the tiny wooden box from his sea-chest, one day, and goes to clean it up in a cloud of irritation before she sees what's inside: a smeared sketch of Sanji cooking, and a marble with an irridescent cat's-eye, a fossil he and Chopper found on the beach and a seashell and straw and a love poem.

**#05 - Run**

It is no surprise, then, that she and Usopp have perfected the art of the one-mile minute while screaming at the tops of their lungs.

**#06 - Hurricane**

The one thing he knows she's sure of is the weather - the pressure of day to day, the clouds overhead, the boiling sea below them, fearless in the face of the shifting Grand Line and precipitation and evaporation and things that would generally make him shit his pants; so _that's_ why he made her the Clima, because they all know she owns the atmosphere.

**#07 - Wings**

"And then when I met the beautiful and not actually wearing very much delicate golden-haired Angel of True Beauty, she drew close to me and - " (Nami wears the queerest expression he's ever seen on her, somewhere in the middle of _exasperation_ and _discomfort_) - "and I, uh, heroically shot her in the face and took her wallet."

**#08 - Cold**

He once sat with Vivi when they were on their way to Drum Island, searching impotently for a doctor, and she was holding Nami's hand - I'm hot, said their patient, I'm boiling, take these covers off - and kicked her limbs, flailing weakly until both of them had to hold her coughing body down: Usopp remembers how her cheek was like ice against his hand, and how for a few moments he knew he'd lost her.

**#09 - Red**

He tells her she's red like the sunset, red like goldfish and red oranges and red cats, as red as anyone could ever want - and she tells him that he's drunk, and that he's lamer with his compliments than _Zoro_.

**#10 - Drink**

She wipes the whipped cream off the top of his lip and sucks it off thoughtfully, knocking back the rest of the hot chocolate and giving him a saucy wink - Usopp, who has seen her snort ketchup out of her nose and therefore is wholly nonplussed, thinks Sanji doesn't know what he wants when he sobs hysterically on the marksman's own shoulder.

**#11 - Midnight**

She keeps watch in the crow's nest with her crossed legs for company, his rubber bands burning holes in her blanket as she raises thumb and forefinger and fires them inexpertly at the stars.

**#12 - Temptation**

There is the barest scatter of golden freckles on his dark shoulders: her mouth is suddenly dry.

**#13 - View**

She tells him the latitude of his body - watches as he watches, her fingers and the topography of his body, holds him down and kisses coordinates from rib to rib, triangulates down to the arch of his burnt-brown hip, marks his geographical characteristics and _bites_.

**#14 - Music**

And then there's the question of how she could kiss anyone who played their armpit... oh God, the other three and Tony just joined in.

**#15 - Silk**

She spent more money than Usopp's ever held with both hands outstretched on those stockings, and now they're wrapped around the ugly splintered gashes of his ribs.

**#16 - Cover**

He's no Zoro, but you can sometimes catch Usopp camped out legs-up on the couch in the men's quarters half-asleep and dreaming: and when she is tired of life and tired of ink and tired of paper, just for that barest minute, he will feel her drop her weight down on his body and join him.

**#17 - Promise**

The moment she meets Yasopp, she will **not** kick him in the dick.

**#18 - Dream**

Sometimes she looks at him too hard the hazy moments after waking, breaks in a cold sweat and hates herself for it - of all the dumb, stupid things Usopp might be, a merman isn't one of them.

**#19 - Candle**

Waxen eddies slop over the sides of the candle-holder when he finds her, fast asleep on her maps; ever the shiphand-cum-whipping boy, he snuffs out the guttering light with thumb and forefinger, puts his coat over her shoulders and goes out to take watch.

**#20 - Talent**

He teaches she and Luffy how to spit plum-stones from the deck-railing, and in a fit of inelegant juvenilia they spend five minutes aiming at Zoro's head and laughing like maniacs - Usopp gets Zoro in the nose, and she is helpless, she is six years old all over again.

**#21 - Silence**

They are wordless in the wake of each other's bodies, a little bit awestruck, a little bit embarrassed: she puts her hand over his mouth so that they can't break the moment, can't break the spell: (he still remembers the sound of the sea).

**#22 - Journey**

Maybe it's she and him who have come the furthest, she thinks, though her journey feels like an untruth - Usopp has always had the greatest capacity for bravery in the face of chronic cowardice, the country boy from Syrup Village faced with the world, whereas she's spent all her life just running away.

**#23 - Fire**

After Usopp touches the lick of flame to Chopper's sparkler he flicks Sanji's lighter to her own, passing the thing back to the amused cook, and both of them are transfixed with the light of Nami's laugh as she drinks in the varicoloured sparks (he notices him noticing; he notices him noticing him noticing; she notices the noticing and thinks both of them are idiots).

**#24 - Strength**

They're the weakest of all of them - even Chopper, who is their young and skulking and beloved doctor-beastman; when he passes her the Clima Tact, he says that it means they have to draw strength from each other instead, whatever they have in their hands and their feet and their hearts.

**#25 - Mask**

For some reason Nami found Sogeking kind of cute, and knew then that she needed _lots and lots of therapy_.

**#26 - Ice**

She melts slivers of crushed ice on her wet, pink tongue, only the moment is ruined by Luffy sticking _his_ up his nose: the marksman is thumping the table and laughing uproariously, she obviously can't compete with _that_.

**#27 - Fall**

She loves them, she loves him, she loved them long ago: she fell for the sea and the sky and for three boys who chew with their mouths open, and he's the only one who is terrified enough like she is to reach out and touch her.

**#28 - Forgotten**

He doesn't remember what that mark is on her palm until, struck with the memory, she laughs - presses her palm to his, pulling their fingers into the sign for victory, where she'd stabbed herself through so that he could keep on living a few seconds more.

**#29 - Dance**

They're so pissed that Zoro's dancing with Luffy and only half-conscious, all of them sunburned-barefoot on the sand and her showing Usopp how _real_ pirates do the drunken waltz.

**#30 - Body**

She takes his virginity in the bathroom with the door locked, neither knowing quite what they're doing, running on teenage want and drunk on the sea, on themselves, on the ship and being married to this, forever, forever, forever - she kisses every single one of his long, elegant marksman's fingers, and he stammers her name like a prayer.

**#31 - Sacred**

Sometimes she loves him like a man loves a woman, wants to protect his naivete from all the hurts of the world, wants to ball him up in her fingers and crush him between her palms.

**#32 - Farewells**

One day she wakes up and wonders if she will, one day, be giving him back into the white palms of Kaya: kissing him goodbye and sailing away, shoving her hands in her pockets like a boy, giving up her best investment and - and - truest friend.

**#33 - World**

For her the world is drawn on heavy, fine paper, with keys and grids; for him it is drawn on heavy, fine paper, with her eyes sketched in with soft lead.

**#34 - Formal**

She spends most of her time tying and re-tying Zoro's tie in the spaces between Zoro trying to untie his tie and tie it for himself - and when she comes to him, chiffon skirts washing around her ankles, she grins at him and simply pats him on the cheek.

**#35 - Fever**

She rests her feet on the bed by Usopp's feet - you're a good doctor, Tony - and spends half the night with one of Robin's books and a wet rag for his forehead.

**#36 - Laugh**

"No," she says, "I like you because you make me laugh."

**#37 - Lies**

He is the greatest liar in the universe, but the greatest lies he tells now are those made by omission - being able to live from day to day without shaking Luffy's shoulders into apoplexy and yelling _last night I thought she and I were maybe one person, is this allowed or not?_

**#38 - Forever**

If ever the end of the world comes, it will find them on this boat: the same old fool as always to make his marriage vows to the sea at the age of seventeen, but this is forever, she is forever, this is what he wanted.

**#39 - Overwhelmed**

Nami is, to him, _girl_ and _woman_, and _lover_, everything and only and all, bowing to her and laying down life and soul and investment plans as they all do whenever she crooks one finger: but he has seen her weep for him, and so part of him is gone that he can never get back.

**#40 - Whisper**

It passes around the table, counter-clockwise, from Chopper to Luffy as he mops up Sanji's soup with yesterday's bread - "Nami says your fly is still open," hisses their captain helpfully into his ear, and Usopp has to be given a disembodied Heimlich from Robin.

**#41 - Wait**

Wait, so you goddamn _love_ him, says the swordsman, as they lean their backs against the mask and soak up the sun and the wood, and she grins wickedly - what, don't you love us too?

**#42 - Talk**

"Did I ever tell you the story of brave crusader Captain Usopp and his _very much_ devoted and talented navigator, Nami?"

**#43 - Search**

Nami sticks her hand down his clothes and grins at him, effusive, illuminating, angelic, radiant, beautiful and happy and in love with him - Usopp's happy fantasy fairyland is ruined wholesale by her tugging at his overalls and announcing gleefully, "You have _coins_ in your _pocket lining_," as if she has discovered El Dorado.

**#44 - Hope**

You're not so bad yourself, she says, - Captain.

**#45 - Eclipse**

The first step that she took towards the light began with that simple choice: to stab him honestly, floating down to become fetid and putrefied at the bottom of Arlong Park's catchment-pool, or to pull herself wholesale into the dazzling warmth Luffy gave off with a swift and painful trick: and when she chose Usopp and clenched her bloodied palm the shadow was a little more gone, and the wall started crumbling.

**#46 - Gravity**

He is only seventeen, and she can't blame him for the heavy careless weight of his gaze that sometimes follows when she even more carelessly brushes his hand with her own.

**#47 - Highway **

If he could have seen the road stretched out in front of him - the sea, and the Merry, and the others, and Nami's brastrap - Usopp wonders if he shouldn't have rather, in fact, made another choice, like for example hiding under a table.

**#48 - Unknown **

No well-fed, purring cat could stretch out the same way Nami stretches out - languid and naked and supine on the rug, eyes heavy-lidded with watching his hands, her hissing indrawn breath at Captain Usopp's brave exploration of the uncharted mystery that is the underside of her knee.

**#49 - Lock **

The half-turned key falls out the door when Luffy opens it, and he takes their red and staring faces in: "Ah," he says brightly, "a mystery!"

**#50 - Breathe**

"I do love you, you know," she says to the hollow of his neck, and Usopp forgets how to breathe.


End file.
